The Drowning Girl

India Morgan Phelps - Imp to her friends - is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth - or from something far, far stranger....

There were many things about this book that initially appealed to me. But the narrative - told from the viewpoint of a woman who doubts her sanity, as we do - was so loose that the plot threads just got lost. It takes a brilliant writer to hold one's attention while the characters ramble, and while this author's style, knowledge of various subjects and vivid sex scenes may have enough appeal to overcome this for some readers, it left me waiting for the end.

A troubled narrator makes some things inherently difficult, but I didn't think that she ever found her voice. The obsessions, water and animal imagery, gender issues, etc., were heavy handed and obscured the relationships that could have been a major strength of the book. In the end, I never really cared about any of the characters enough to want to untangle the story.

The Ice Queen

The body of 92-two-year-old Jossi Goldberg, Holocaust survivor and American citizen, is found shot to death execution style in his house near Frankfurt. A five-digit number is scrawled in blood at the murder scene. The autopsy reveals an old and unsuccessfully covered tattoo on the corpse's arm - a blood type marker once used by Hitler's SS. Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are faced with a riddle. Was the old man not Jewish after all? Who was he, really?

Food: A Love Story

Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet ("choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover") and decrying the worst offenders ("kale is the early morning of foods"). Fans flocked to his New York Times best-selling book Dad Is Fat to hear him riff on fatherhood but now, in his second book, he will give them what they really crave - his thoughts on all things culinary(ish).

Jim Gaffigan is funny and likeable, but this book is everything but. He just discusses food then makes cliched remarks about it. I found it impossible to finish - it was just too annoying. Like the know-it-all colleague who has been everywhere, tried everything, and wants to yak about the way he feels about it.

Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts. Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest.

Narrator: The main narrator was so slow that she was still OK at 2x speed. I'm from Mississippi - I know slow - but the unnatural gravitas was excruciating.

Story: One mystery, tortured to death in cliches and poor dialog. These characters spoke in voices that no one uses and were minimally developed. The ending. Wow. I won't spoil it but I think it was spoiled for us all with an incredible plot device that left me feeling even worse about the time I spent listening to this book.

Theme: Elephant grief is described with horrible stories of death and suffering. While I do applaud the attempt to raise awareness of the cruelty they often endure, I just hope a good portion of the profits go to them so I didn't suffer through this book in vain.

I forced myself to listen to the end by speeding it up, but quite relieved that it's over.

The Secret Place: Dublin Murder Squad, Book 5

"The Secret Place", a board where the girls at St Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.

Wow...bad on so many levels. Hours and hours of 8 teenage girls. Dumb dialog - does anyone really say totes adorbs? And if that wasn't bad enough, the girls' characters just are not well enough developed to differentiate and 3 names start with the J sound. Twee narration. I love long books but this couldn't end soon enough. A bad surprise from an author I've enjoyed in the past. Pick any other of her books.

Missing You

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Harlan Coben set huge sales records with last year’s Six Years - and he’s poised to do it again in his next breathtaking stand-alone thriller. Harlan Coben, author of six consecutive instant number-one New York Times best sellers and a total of 24 award-winning, best-selling, and internationally acclaimed novels, returns with another ripped-from-real-life thriller full of impossibly high emotional stakes and the real-to-life characters for which he has become famous.

This was a very weirdly paced book - with the thriller aspect taking a back seat to the personal life of the main character. And this life loops around in weird ways with just too many gimmicky characters. I won't give away anything, but the characters Aqua and Sugar seemed shoe horned in while tracking down the bad guys just kind of happened. The secondary mysteries - what happened to the fiance, who killed the dad and why - took away energy from the "will the victims be saved" pulse and space from developing those characters. It made me wonder if some of the plot elements were an effort to include current themes and seem relevant.

I just can't recommend it. It did have interesting moments but it wasn't satisfying.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan brings her unique gifts as a novelist and short story writer to a compulsively listenable narrative that centers on Bennie Salazar, an aging punk rocker and record executive, and the beautiful Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs.

The 13 intertwining characters grow old as we reflect on their lives. Depressing and uplifting as some people get what they deserve and others don't, but interesting and thought provoking. I like the music themes as well.

Taken in Death: In Death, Book 37.5

Two young children disappear from their East Side home in New York City, their nanny killed in cold blood. As Lieutenant Eve Dallas begins to unravel the crime scene and search for Henry and Gala MacDermit, she's drawn into the twisted mind of a kidnapper who will stop at nothing to take revenge. Horrific threats concerning the brother and sister hit far too close to home for Eve, drawing her back into memories of her own tortured childhood.

If I had paid more than $1.99 or had to listen much longer, I would be upset. It did keep my ears occupied during a 3 hour run, but I should have listened to my self breathe. The characters are just stupid - there were so many obvious plot holes and character inconsistencies that I couldn't engage with the story.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

Wow....I absolutely loved this book. Everything about it was wonderful - the flawed but redeemable Theo and the cast of people in his life - from the honorable to the horrible. The pacing of the story, however, kept me hanging on every chapter. The lulls then the quiet bombshells were so well done that I just sat stunned several times.

I generally hate when people review by comparison, but this reminded me of Pat Conroy and John LeCarre combined - the lovely writing and characters of Conroy, the intrigue and twists of LeCarre. If you like either author, buy this book.

I highly recommend this book. I plan on buying and giving several copies as gifts.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. It is quirky, with a great mix of over the top and realism. It is so well written that characters' actions seem explicable while not always anticipatable.

It is, at its heart, the story of a woman who struggles with her place in the world as a mother, a wife, a "genius", and a member of a community. Her story is set in a charming narrative that is almost comical but always feels real and fresh.

I usually love dark and complex books so I don't know why I picked this - maybe it reminded me of Nick Hornby a little - but I'm very glad I did.

Rivers: A Novel

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn't rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast - stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border - has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline.

If I say this was a sweet post apocalyptic novel it will sound crazy, but this is a story of a man coming to terms with harsh realities where he has a choice - join civil society or remain in both an idealized past and brutal future. I loved the author's gentle, unpolished voice and simple style. This is a little bit adventure, mystery and love story - hard to classify but moving and compelling. I highly recommend it.

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